Translation: Assamese Poetry of Guna Moran

Original: Assamese: Guna Moran - English Translation: Bibekananda Choudhury

Guna Moran

LIKE WATER

Shapeless
Wordless

Flows down
Turns into a river

What would flow like a river
Who is benevolent like water

I don’t have means to buy golden utensil
To store water to quench my thirst

I cut out a bamboo cylinder to keep water and hung it down from the wall
Help myself with a swig fetching it as I get thirsty

Had golden utensil been favourite of water
What had been the plight of a person like me

As I measured shapeless water with a suspicious eye
I could not understand its value

Now only I understand
Why it does not have the shape
Neither the words.
***


RAVANA

One soul
Three incarnations

All three times
Iconoclast
All the three times
Stayed in the hands God

How benevolent Ravana had been
More devoted to God
Than a god believer

Adversity is the best stairway to reach God
Was rightly understood by wise Ravana

Memory is the best offering
It is only possible
To memories every moment
Through adversity
So
Ravana did not turn a believer
***


THE THREE MONKEYS AND ME

One monkey said closing the eyes –
Don’t look at bad things
Another monkey said tying its face –
Don’t say anything bad
The third one said covering the ears –
Don’t listen to bad things

I didn’t listen to the monkeys
In spite of being a human

Did many things
Travelled across places and States
Tasted some so called sins
In the name of experience

At the end the mind turned melancholic
An unknown feeling of guilt chases me around
Now

What did I do
What did I do
I didn’t perform prayers
The tiger of illusion chases

At last I surmised
I was born at a wrong place 
I was born at the wrong time
I was born wrong.
***

---

Bios
Author: Guna Moran is an Assamese poet & critic. His poems are being translated into Italian and France language and have been published in various national and international magazines, journals, websites, newspapers like The Tuck magazine, Spillword, The Merak magazine, Story Teller, The Poem Hunter, The Sentinal, The Hills Times, Best Poetry and so on.

Translator: Bibekananda Choudhury, an electrical engineer by profession, working with the State Government of Assam, has completed his Masters from BITS-Pilani. He has also earned a diploma in French language from Gauhati University. He has got published works (both original and translated) in Assamese, Bengali & English in popular periodicals and newspapers. His translated poems have been published in 'Indian Literature', the bi-monthly journal of sahitya akademy. 'Suryakatha', the Bengali adaptation done by him is being taught in the undergraduate Courses of Banglore University and Post graduate Courses of Gauhati University. A collection of 101 folk tales from the foothills of Patkai translated by him has been taken up by publication by Gauhati University. He is presently the editor-in-chief of Dimorian Review, a multidisciplinary web journal.

Setu, May 2019

Assamese Poetry: Guna Moran

Original: Assamese: Guna Moran - English Translation: Bibekananda Choudhury

Guna Moran

PANGS OF CHILDBIRTH
I was also a child
When my kid brother was born

As I heard the whimpers of my mother
Prompted by the delivery pain
Enquired with the grandmas gathered there the reason

Rather than answering
They all asked for a gift from me smilingly

At the moment of creation of a poem
I remember fondly that special moment of my mother
When I get swept in an unearthly feeling

In my motionless body
There exists no physical pain
In such a fearless-nonchalant condition
My shadow often asks me

What happened to you?

I stay
Dumb
Helpless
Just a serene smile drops down from my lips
Like the one
Glittering on the face of my mother
Just after my brother was born
***
THE BASIC BOOK
Forecast of weather
On the face of the sky
News of tide
High and low
On the swinging waves of sea

Am I at peace
Are my near and dear one
In pain
Face is the carrier of the concealed answers

Gist of the book
At the preface
Full volume of expression
At the face

The face is not just a face
It is the preface of personality
(one can understand the heart looking at the face)

Life means an assortment of words
Sonorous body means an open book

We are each
A coverless sounding book
Face is our prefaces
Therefore
At the moment of conversation with the guests
We ourselves understand
That was not clearly told
Reading the preface

The face is the original basic book
That can be read and heard
Without learning the alphabet
***


Afforestation Of faith

One may turn faithful by putting on faith
Faith is the basis of faith

Faith is being worshipped over the ages
We put in different names

Faith was the hidden factor behind the worship of the rock
By our grandpa
I the dumb fellow
Do not know the different means of faith

You first believe in yourself
I too first believe in myself
One cannot become entity of faith of someone
Who do not believe in faith in oneself

---

Bios

Author: Guna Moran is an Assamese poet & critic. His poems are being translated into Italian and France language and have been published in various national and international magazines, journals, websites, newspapers like The Tuck magazine, Spillword, The Merak magazine, Story Teller, The Poem Hunter, The Sentinal, The Hills Times, Best Poetry and so on.

Translator: Bibekananda Choudhury, an electrical engineer by profession, working with the State Government of Assam, has completed his Masters from BITS-Pilani. He has also earned a diploma in French language from Gauhati University. He has got published works (both original and translated) in Assamese, Bengali & English in popular periodicals and newspapers. His translated poems have been published in 'Indian Literature', the bi-monthly journal of sahitya akademy. 'Suryakatha', the Bengali adaptation done by him is being taught in the undergraduate Courses of Banglore University and Post graduate Courses of Gauhati University. A collection of 101 folk tales from the foothills of Patkai translated by him has been taken up by publication by Gauhati University. He is presently the editor-in-chief of Dimorian Review, a multidisciplinary web journal.

Setu, October 2019

Translation: Assamese Poetry of Guna Moran

Original: Assamese: Guna Moran - English Translation: Bibekananda Choudhury

Guna Moran

FLOWING ALONG LIKE THE RIVER

I
Keep treading on
The chosen path
Bearing along
At every step

Sigh of anguish
Comes out
Piercing through the heart

I ask myself
My own question
Make myself listen to
My own replies

Solitary life
Lived alone

Carrying a load of neck deep sorrow
Of flowing along
Like a river
The life flows too
To the sea of finish

Death is the container
Of all the complaint
So life points towards death
 
UNWELL
Original : Assamese : Guna Moran
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
Writing on
Creator is finally unhappy

On touching his lifeless hands
Like a dead snake
As I meet him
My hand too turns ice cold

In his pallid eyes like a dead fish
There appears to be a cursed fountain
Flowing down under the sand

The sun too has many sorrows
The lights end up landing on the hell
Like the grieving white paper stung by the pen
(paper bears the stains of the pen)

I cannot make the unhappy happy
I don’t have the capacity
To hand happiness
Borrowing from sorrow

Still at the very opportunity
I prepare a stage for the unhappy
And then I too turn unpopular

It is said that
There is no stage for the unhappy


THE BIRDS

Because they do not have a
permanent home
The birds are always free from the
worries of land and property

They make a nest at the time of hatching
The fledglings fly away as they grow wings
The nests too drop down as it rots

As they do not have a permanent
home to say their own
They cannot be blinded by the
longings for their kins

So they can fly away to reach the horizon
With their partners
At their own will

Therefore  it’s only them
Who can enjoy the pleasure of
Getting drenched in rain
With their partners


Blue

Abode of blue
The beautiful sky
Abode of blue
The salty sea

If blue is sorrow
How much blue did the sky imbue to
turn blue
How much blue does the sea hold to
turn blue

Rivers are happy to leave the burden
Of flowing to sea
The sea is blue holding the happy
rivers in its bosom

My neelkanth parents left for
Heavenly abode leaving me happy
The sky said to be blue as it the
abode of those heavenbound souls

The sky is blue
The sea is blue
And blue am I

I mean anyone
Who can turn neelkanth
imbibing  the blue

N B: Neelkanth : Shiva, the Hindu God, who is said to have got his neck (kanth) singed blue by the power of poison that came out while the sea was  churned with a mountain by the Devas holding at one end and the Asuras at the other.

---

Bios

Author: Guna Moran is an Assamese poet & critic. His poems are being translated into Italian and France language and have been published in various national and international magazines, journals, websites, newspapers like The Tuck magazine, Spillword, The Merak magazine, Story Teller, The Poem Hunter, The Sentinal, The Hills Times, Best Poetry and so on.

Translator: Bibekananda Choudhury, an electrical engineer by profession, working with the State Government of Assam, has completed his Masters from BITS-Pilani. He has also earned a diploma in French language from Gauhati University. He has got published works (both original and translated) in Assamese, Bengali & English in popular periodicals and newspapers. His translated poems have been published in 'Indian Literature', the bi-monthly journal of sahitya akademy. 'Suryakatha', the Bengali adaptation done by him is being taught in the undergraduate Courses of Banglore University and Post graduate Courses of Gauhati University. A collection of 101 folk tales from the foothills of Patkai translated by him has been taken up by publication by Gauhati University. He is presently the editor-in-chief of Dimorian Review, a multidisciplinary web journal.

Setu, May 2019